Local Troubleshooting Resources

Most colleges employ one or more computing officers to run the college academic computing facilities - this is generally the best person to try first as they will be familiar with the local facilities and their set-up. You can view your local College IT information by visiting the Welcome To IT site which links to College IT web sites. If you don't know who your computing officer is, your college office should be able to tell you.

Department/Faculty Computing Staff

Similarly, most academic units have staff who support the unit's computing facilities. Again, for problems relating to those facilities, they should be the first line of help. See the Welcome To IT Department listing for links.

IT Services Help Centre Services

If your local IT support staff cannot solve your problem, IT Services operates a number of Help Services accessible in person (pre-booked appointmens), by email, and by telephone. The Help Centre is open week days by appointment only. See the IT Services Help Centre pages for more information. Always have your University Card barcode number to hand when you contact IT Services. A large amount of IT Services information is available online - if you can't find something, try the IT Services search found on all pages of our site.

Local Usenet Newsgroups

A number of local Usenet newsgroups (names starting ox.) exist where you can view and post messages on various topics. To use this facility, you need a news client program: web browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer have this function built in. You should configure your software to use news.ox.ac.uk as its news/NNTP host and then subscribe to the discussion groups you wish to look at on a regular basis. News client software also allows you to post messages.

Local Special Interest Groups

A number of local special interest groups exist where subscribed members can receive and post groupwide messages via email.. Most groups are open to anyone, but a few have restricted membership. Many groups also have an associated Usenet Newsgroup where copies of all messages are automatically placed.